I research productivity
14 years of research on productivity, prioritization, interruptions, and time management.
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The short version.
Ph.D. in management, specializing in time management and productivity. Peer-reviewed work on whether managing your time actually improves performance and wellbeing. Now teaching it to teams.
PLOS ONE · Meta-analysis
The business case for time management.
Better time management is linked to stronger job performance. That link has grown stronger over time.
Explore workplace-relevant evidence across performance, motivation, wellbeing, and strain. The explorer focuses on workplace-relevant findings; the study totals describe the full meta-analysis.
158studies
53,957participants
490effect sizes
2019literature included through 2019
Outcome explorer
Select a signal.
is a correlation: zero means no association; farther from zero means a stronger relationship.
Job performance · Over time
The link has grown stronger over time.
Newer studies show a stronger relationship between time management and job performance than older studies. The upward pattern is statistically significant.
More recent studiesshow a stronger performance link.
Why this matters now
More freedom requires more self-management.
Greater freedom over how work gets done also means greater responsibility for structuring time.
For teams, a shared productivity framework offers a common language for priorities, focus, and follow-through, without relying on constant oversight.
View all 32 estimates as a table
| Outcome | Category | r | 95% CI | Studies | Participants | Evidence note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Job performance | Performance | +.259 | +.197 to +.318 | 21 | 3,990 | Pooled estimate. Publication bias was rated moderate; trim-and-fill produced an adjusted estimate of r = .188. |
| Results-based performance | Performance | +.221 | +.144 to +.295 | 13 | 2,532 | The difference from behavior-based performance was not statistically significant. |
| Behavior-based performance | Performance | +.297 | +.225 to +.365 | 13 | 2,474 | The difference from results-based performance was not statistically significant. |
| Creativity | Performance | +.460 | +.347 to +.560 | 1 | 213 | Single-study finding; suggestive, not a pooled meta-analytic estimate. |
| Helping behavior | Performance | +.160 | +.038 to +.278 | 1 | 254 | Single-study finding; suggestive, not a pooled meta-analytic estimate. |
| Job involvement | Performance | +.207 | +.129 to +.282 | 4 | 617 | Pooled correlation across four studies. |
| Less procrastination | Performance | +.374 | +.166 to +.550 | 2 | 198 | Two-study estimate; the procrastination measure was reverse-coded. |
| Motivation | Performance | +.352 | +.226 to +.467 | 4 | 711 | Pooled correlation across four studies. |
| Proactiveness | Performance | +.267 | +.121 to +.401 | 3 | 813 | Pooled correlation across three studies. |
| Overall wellbeing | Wellbeing | +.313 | +.244 to +.380 | 30 | 9,905 | Pooled correlation across thirty studies. |
| Job satisfaction | Wellbeing | +.248 | +.189 to +.305 | 11 | 2,856 | Pooled correlation across eleven studies. |
| Life satisfaction | Wellbeing | +.426 | +.273 to +.558 | 9 | 2,855 | The paper reports this association as 72% larger than the one with job satisfaction. |
| Positive mental health | Wellbeing | +.556 | +.349 to +.711 | 2 | 473 | Two-study estimate; promising but based on limited evidence. |
| Optimism | Wellbeing | +.305 | +.108 to +.479 | 2 | 330 | Two-study estimate; interpret cautiously. |
| Positive affect | Wellbeing | +.280 | +.186 to +.368 | 5 | 2,725 | Pooled correlation across five studies. |
| Sense of purpose | Wellbeing | +.351 | +.274 to +.424 | 1 | 529 | Single-study finding; suggestive, not a pooled meta-analytic estimate. |
| Overall distress | Less strain | −.222 | −.273 to −.170 | 58 | 15,387 | Pooled correlation across 58 studies. |
| Overall stress | Less strain | −.225 | −.295 to −.153 | 26 | 5,621 | Pooled correlation across 26 studies. |
| Emotional exhaustion | Less strain | −.260 | −.338 to −.179 | 3 | 213 | Pooled correlation across three studies; the total sample was comparatively small. |
| Work-life conflict | Less strain | −.163 | −.277 to −.043 | 9 | 2,812 | Pooled correlation across nine studies. |
| Overall psychological distress | Less strain | −.254 | −.315 to −.190 | 34 | 10,100 | Pooled correlation across 34 studies. |
| Anxiety | Less strain | −.181 | −.255 to −.105 | 16 | 6,648 | Pooled correlation across sixteen studies. |
| Psychological distress | Less strain | −.358 | −.447 to −.263 | 10 | 2,196 | This was one of the larger distress associations in the paper. |
| Boredom | Less strain | −.310 | −.507 to −.081 | 5 | 1,248 | The estimate varied considerably across the five studies. |
| Worry | Less strain | −.191 | −.355 to −.016 | 3 | 291 | Three-study estimate with a comparatively small sample. |
| Conscientiousness | Context | +.451 | +.326 to +.561 | 15 | 5,159 | This is a personality correlation, not evidence that time management is fixed; the paper notes that training can improve skills. |
| Internal locus of control | Context | +.346 | +.269 to +.419 | 3 | 579 | The direction of causality may run either way; experimental evidence elsewhere in the paper suggests training can increase perceived control. |
| Self-esteem | Context | +.346 | +.225 to +.456 | 3 | 947 | The direction of causality cannot be established from this pooled correlation. |
| Multitasking | Context | −.088 | −.164 to −.010 | 5 | 932 | The association was statistically significant but very small. |
| Role overload | Context | −.146 | −.284 to −.003 | 7 | 1,187 | The confidence interval sits close to zero, so the estimate is modest. |
| Prior training exposure | Context | +.173 | +.031 to +.309 | 3 | 846 | This is an association with prior training exposure, not the causal effect size of training. |
| Job autonomy | Context | +.101 | −.060 to +.256 | 4 | 751 | The confidence interval crosses zero. This result is important when interpreting the historical trend discussed above. |
TEDx
The Philosophy of Time Management
Why the question of what your time is for comes before any question of how to schedule it. Over a million views.
Watch the talk
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Building a Time Management Mindset
The habits of thought that make a system stick, rather than the system itself.
Take the course LinkedIn LearningBoosting Your Time Management with AI Tools
Where AI tools save time, where they quietly cost it, and how to tell the two apart.
Take the course For teamsTraining for organizations
Team workshops run through Highline Productivity.
How it works